Re: [GeoNetwork-users] [Sdi-ea] Invitation for Expession of Interest to participate in an East African SDI Mashup

[JELLE H. <jel...@gm...>]

Mick,

Hat deeply off for the well-articulated initiative which is both timely and
much called for in the present time. It is indeed the bottom-up approach of
capable and committed individuals which is likely to bring about the key
changes required for a more common approach to geospatial information
management and sharing through enabling technologies and organizational
collaboration. Indeed, an East Africa SDI could well become the first
regional testbed for the cooperation envisaged between the key players in
the region and UNSDI, INSPIRE, GSDI, EUROGI, ITC, just to name  few, as one
of the intended outcomes of the UNSDI Global Partners Meeting (UGPM) in
Frascati.
I will be in Ispra on 27 and 28 March for further planning discussions with
both Alessandro Annoni's group as well as the African Observatory initiative
of Alan Belward's Unit and how to engage 'Brussels' and, if you agree, will
share your idea with them and report back.
Please let me know what response you are getting from the region during the
next week.

Best regards.

Jelle
UNGIWG Secretariat
On 17/03/07, Mick Wilson <Mic...@un...> wrote:
>
>
> Greetings, ppgis and sdi colleagues, and with apologies for cross-list
> spamming.
>
> The following is wordier than it ought to be but, please, hack along with
> me to the end.
>
> I am looking for motivated and capable individuals and institutions to
> participate in a real-world demonstrator of openSDI and ppGIS capabilities
> focussed on East Africa.
>
> Lots is written about the philosophy and benefits of opens source/ open
> standards efforts to get important geographically- related data flowing
> for
> the benefit of society as a whole and the institutions within society. So
> far, however, the the vast majority of real examples we have to learn from
> are government mandated or funded. And most (all?) of these are based in
> OECD areas where institutional problems may remain but the technology
> issues are being resolved - consider the likes of the US NSDI and INSPIRE.
>
> Meanwhile, in the real world, such as here in East Africa, hurdles abound.
> Meanwhile, East Africa hosts a community of practitioners as rich in
> expertise as you'll find anywhere -and- with the added incentive of having
> to respond to pragmatic demands in their own backyard, every day of the
> week, using geo-information issues. Nairobi alone hosts over 25 UN
> agencies' offices, plus two CGIAR centres, numerous national govenment
> agencies plus international NGOs ALL using spatial data in our day-to-day
> work. Add to that the commercial companies and the training institutions
> helping build GIS capability and innovation. Factor in our neighbours in
> Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia to the count. Their combined area of
> operations extends to south Sudan, eastern DRC, Somalia, the African Great
> Lakes region and beyond. Any and all of these players are paying heavily
> to
> duplicate each others data, services and intellectual expertise. I want to
> look for a better way.
>
> My thesis is that, in East Africa, we have requirements that -demand-
> rational use of geospatial information coupled colocated with the
> concentrated expertise to put SDI words into practice. Sure, we are
> constrained by the reality of horrid, narrow, unreliable and expensive
> telecommunications. Yes, we have all the usual institutional disparities
> over policies governing data discovery, access and use. Fine: let us find
> clever ways to use SDI principles to combine our expensive technical
> resources to create valuable, light-weight and accessible geo-information
> products. Let us identify and work closely with real-world partners
> lacking
> these resources but closest to those dealing with social and environmental
> problems that our agencies are charged to address. Let us at least start
> to
> expose and tease aport some of the governance and policy constraints.
>
> So: this is an invitation for (informal) expressions of interest from any
> and all of of you working in East Africa, or with interests this region,
> to
> partipate in an unfunded, unofficial but unfettered exploration of SDI in
> practice. It will need identified users with real requirements. It will
> require assessing the real likelihood of adding value or reducing cost. We
> will need to identify assets and line them up against needs. We'll have to
> identify gaps in our capabilities and work to bridge them. We'll need to
> find ways that we can incrementally approach Perfect Solutions within our
> existing work and budgets while demonstrating success at each step along
> the way. We will walk face-first into all the issues of institutional
> policy and practice that define the realities of makeing data exchange
> real.
>
> Let me be clear upfront: I have no money from the UN Environment Programme
> nor any other source to put into this exercise. I cannot say that it is an
> official designated element of the current programme of work. I can say
> that it clearly fits into efoorts to reform the UN ao it's "delivering as
> one", with the increased emphasis for the UN to be responding to
> countries'
> requirements, and in UNEP's own Bali Strategic Plan for capacity building
> and technology transfer. I can offer limited in-kind technical support to
> help practitioners add SDI capabilities to their existing technical assets
> - help with metadata authoring and publishing tools like GeoNetwork; help
> with setting up open source map servers and feature services (I hope to
> help setting up discovery for those services, as well); and help where
> necessary with on-line fora or listservs to carry the debate on governance
> and policy. I hope to maybe host a couple of technical workshops at UNEP
> around mid-year, but that's it. Okay, I'll also help document and
> publicize
> the effort, and to work with my contacts to cast it into wider audiences
> such as the GSDI (http://www.gsdi.org ),
> GEOSS(http://www,earthobservation.org ) and UN efforts such as the UNSDI
> (http://www.ungiwg.org/unsdi ) and UN-ECA CODI ( www.uneca.org/codi/ ),
> and
> to use the experiences gained to guide contributions to any re-writes of
> the GSDO Cookbook that seem to be underway.
>
> What I'm relying on is our collective sense of frustrated opportunity
> combined with a willingness to pool capabilities for collective benefit.
> Is
> this sustainable? Of course not. Is it a distraction from real work? Of
> course. Might it yield real-life practical exemplars that can be taken to
> funders for future support? You bet. Might it all blow up and reveal that
> SDI is not yet ready for the Real World? Quite plausibly, but I think it's
> worth a go. And, just maybe, it'll provide an exemplar of how the UN can
> get its act together to better support its member countries. Meanwhile,
> UNEP will learn valuable lessons for its continuing operational
> development
> of the Africa Environmental Information Network... I'd hope the same might
> be true for other UN bodies active in this region.
>
> There's a core group of us within the UN in East Africa, half a dozen
> people or so, all with real jobs to do, who will take on the task of
> getting at least one small corner of the UN's back yard in order - that's
> FAO, UNEP, UNHCR, OCHA, UN-Habitat and UN-ECA - trying to show that a UN
> SDI is feasible. The plan is to try to gather similar 'clusters',
> communities of common interest, whose work impinges on or depends upon a
> functioning UN spataial data infrastructure - conservation, humantitarian
> response, food security, infrsatructure development, social equity, what
> have you. We six cannot do the whole job, but we can have a go at it in a
> way that then boosts the prospects for our friends and neighbours.
>
> Call it grandiose but I believe our East African community is perhaps the
> most exciting and likely places on the planet to pull this off, and that
> we
> could be literally writing the book for others around the world to learn
> by. It's too good an opportunity to -not- try it.
>
> PS: many of you are getting this from a list that distributes to other
> lists, such as OSGEO. Please respond to those lists OR directly to me at
> mic...@un... - most of you are not individually known to this
> particular list so your responses, however valuable, will get needlessly
> held up.
>
> Cheers
>
> Footnote: Much of the blame for this mail must lie with Kate Lance. Kate
> is
> a keen and critical watcher of SDI development all over the world but with
> especial focus on developing coubtries. My original thinking, back during
> the UN Geo-Information Working Group meeting last September, was to just
> try and get the UN agencies in Nairobi working SDI-ishly. Kate lambasted
> that as a narrow-minded and silly approach. She was right - the UN and the
> Real World do actually work together in this corner of the world, and an
> SDI-East Africa task must look beyond the narrow confines of the UN.
> Thank you, Kate.
>
> Mick Wilson
> Division of Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA)
> United Nations Environment Programme
> PO Box 30552 -  Nairobi 00100, Kenya
> Tel: +254 20 7623436
> Fax: +254 20 7624315
> Email: mic...@un...
> Web www.unep.net, www.unep.org
>
>
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